Origin

The first recorded use in English is as a drink made from chocolate; it was a fashionable drink in the 17th and 18th centuries. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1664: ‘To a Coffee-house, to drink jocolatte, very good.’ The word comes from French chocolat or Spanish chocolate, from Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs of Mexico) chocolatl ‘food made from cacao seeds’. Cacao (mid 16th century) and cocoa (early 18th century) are basically the same word, also from Nahuatl. Not from Mexico, though, is the expression I should cocoa. It is cockney rhyming slang for ‘I should say so’.